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Monday, June 14, 2010

Wednesday 9th June 2010

Suva is great. The Fijians are so welcoming and most go out of their way to help. We have spent some time wandering around Suva, looking in shops and markets and eating well! While we haven’t had any traditional Fijian food we have had our fair share of curries (from the Fijian Indian population) and the food is good and cheap. The restaurant at the yacht club serves meals for $7 or $8 Fiji dollars (around $5 AUD) and the bar prices are straight from the 70’s. Actually, the whole yacht club appears to be straight from the 70’s, including some of its patrons, but it has a very relaxed feeling about it and we are really enjoying a few sundowners each evening while sitting at the bar, followed by a feed at the restaurant.

Taxis are very cheap and very easy to catch – we haven’t had to wait more than a minute to get a ride in to town. The safety of the cars is questionable, stopping at red lights is apparently optional and the music (usually traditional Indian music) is blaring but for $1 or $2 (AUD) we won’t complain!

We have done some re-provisioning in preparation for our next leg to Noumea and have found that the supermarkets are very expensive! As with most places if you buy local it is a lot cheaper than buying imported goods, and of course being an island the transport costs of imported goods bump up the price considerably. Unfortunately for us the feed that we require is mostly imported as we need tinned and long-life food so we’ve had to be fairly selective and have not bought a lot of the things we had hoped to. As examples, a tin of Heinz baked beans is about $4 and a small container of parmesan cheese is around $9, as is a block of Cadbury’s chocolate and a bag of pasta (AUD). It was Stu’s birthday yesterday and as a much longed for treat I bought him a small box of Darrell Lea chocolates and a packet of Tim Tams. Let’s just say that for what I paid for both would keep us in Tim Tams for months at home (ignoring the fact that we don’t buy Tim Tams at home…!!!). But it was a birthday treat that was enjoyed immensely – this is the first place that chocolate has been any good. It tastes normal!